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This Is A Custom Widget

This Sliding Bar can be switched on or off in theme options, and can take any widget you throw at it or even fill it with your custom HTML Code. Its perfect for grabbing the attention of your viewers. Choose between 1, 2, 3 or 4 columns, set the background color, widget divider color, activate transparency, a top border or fully disable it on desktop and mobile.

This Is A Custom Widget

This Sliding Bar can be switched on or off in theme options, and can take any widget you throw at it or even fill it with your custom HTML Code. Its perfect for grabbing the attention of your viewers. Choose between 1, 2, 3 or 4 columns, set the background color, widget divider color, activate transparency, a top border or fully disable it on desktop and mobile.

This Is A Custom Widget

This Sliding Bar can be switched on or off in theme options, and can take any widget you throw at it or even fill it with your custom HTML Code. Its perfect for grabbing the attention of your viewers. Choose between 1, 2, 3 or 4 columns, set the background color, widget divider color, activate transparency, a top border or fully disable it on desktop and mobile.

Dandelion Moderation & More Smoothie Tips

OK, so maybe I went a little overboard with my ‘Dandelion Madness‘, ….not with last week’s article – but with eating dandelions themselves!

It happened because I was out at the farm where the plants are so much bigger and there are SO many of them. Instead of spending 5 minutes digging up a few young plants– I can go out with a knife and in 10 seconds gather a shopping cart of mature leaves. After throwing a large bunch into the blender, and forgetting my article advise to just make the dandelions a small addition, I drank my supercharged mixture.

No I didn’t collapse, or even throw up. In fact I finished the whole thing. Those last few mouthfuls were getting very very strong though. I normally clean out the last few drops from the blender (Did I mention I was thrifty?) but this time I was glad to wash it down the sink.

I wanted therefore, to EMPHASIZE the part about moderation and add a few other smoothie hints and facts. They are as follows:

1. Keep the taste agreeable. This is not just an obvious statement that only madmen (like myself) might ignore but touches on a safely concern that some hard core raw food enthusiasts take seriously (see Below). If your body loses its attraction for a particular food that you have been eating a lot of, just ease off. You don’t know specifically what your body is telling you but it’s a good thing to follow anyway. This is one of the main principles of regeneration – to keep in touch with your body.

2. Apples are IN, Mangoes are OUT. This could be an entirely subjective preference but again there is some logic behind this choice. I’ve seen many people demonstrate green smoothes with mangoes and sometime bemoaned the fact that its hard to find good mangoes in Canada. Recently the mango season was ON in Edmonton so I got a chance to try out some really good ones but they just don’t work that well with greens in my opinion; Mangos seem just too sweet.

3. Salty Smoothie Soup.A friend of mine Trish Holder doesn’t like any kind of fruit so she substitutes apples with raw ONIONS and sometimes a clove of GARLIC. Since this is the ingredients for vegetable soup she then adds a tablespoon of salty MISO plus celery. She also makes sure her soup is warm enough by using quite warm water. I can’t testify to the taste of this mixture because I can’t handle raw onions or garlic but Trish is one smart lady who has helped a lot of people with her knowledge of food.

4. Add some Zing with Ginger.At Real Food for Life we have promoted the benefits of ginger many times. Here’s a chance to add some zing to your smoothie and beef up your digestion at the same time. Even one tablespoon of raw ginger is plenty.

When are greens TOO much?

Leafy green vegetables contain along with their abundance of minerals the possibility of traces of organic substances called alkaloids.

There are many different kinds of plant alkaloids but the famous ones are nicotine, cocaine, morphine, and caffeine. As you might notice these compounds have STRONG effects on the body and because of this they tend to give this class of compounds a bad reputation. Used properly alkaloids can have good effects but most people would rather not take chances.

Different plants produce different kinds of alkaloids. Therefore if you are eating a LOT of greens (as in ONE TO TWO POUNDS A DAY as some raw foodists do) you are recommended to ROTATE your greens so you don’t get too much of any particular alkaloid. Those large tubs of spinach are just one pound so you only have to concern yourself with this if you are going through at least one of those a day …which would be 4-8 smoothies. Rather than concern yourself with all these small risk factors you can easily stay safe JUST by noticing your bodies reaction, and as we stated above, IF you start not wanting a particular food than back off.

Share YOUR favorite smoothie!

I’m sure you have your own unique ingredients with smoothies. Feel free to share them below in the comment section.

5 Comments

Patricia Matz
June 23, 2009 at 5:33 am

My recipes consists of
1 of the berries – Raspberry, Strawberry, or Blueberry
1 of – Romaine lettuce, Celery, or Spinach (whichever is on sale)
Always Nuplus and Udo oil
I like using berries as their flavor stands out over the celery, etc. If I feel a cold coming on I will substitute them with oranges.
After reading the above article I cannot wait to add ginger as a staple.

Patricia Matz
July 9, 2009 at 5:44 am

On the previous comment I made I placed (whichever is on sale) on the wrong line – it should be nexted to the berries line as they are more costly than spinach/so on …and worth every penny!
I have a question – as we eat these foods for the live enzymes and life energy; What about using the stems/leaves of the carrot tops, radish, beets, etc in a smoothie (possibly in a salad)?? Do they not hold nutional value aswell? If not I will continue to compost them but I hate to miss out on anything good and get my $s worth. Please reply the answer

I hate to think how much good green food is wasted because we were taught to eat only the roots of some things. Beet tops and turnip tops are wonderful food, even carrot tops taste like carrot and are good in a smoothie or salad. Beet tops are grown as greens in some places, never mind the roots. The tops of celeriac taste very strongly of celery, so they’re a bit overpowering in salad but great for seasoning soups or in a smoothie. Being such a very dark green, it means there are lots of good things in them. Don’t toss out all those nice dark green tops of root veggies, unless they’re going bad. Eat them !

Sheila
May 9, 2013 at 10:28 am

I’ve been doing smoothies for a long time. In the summer I walk out to my garden in the morning and bring a handful of whatever greens are big enough: spinach, kale, beet tops , chard, red lettuce, and esp. pepper grass (or cress). I add this to frozen berries, olive oil, and the other smoothie good stuff. It feels so good to go out and pick the greens then consume them within minutes. Over the winter I have been growing wheat grass on the window sill and love that in my smoothies . Now that spring is here I am going to go out and pull up the new dandelions to add(just a bit). we seem to be growing gourmet ones in every crack and cranny so I want to try eating them instead of killing them.